The
breath of the man she was to yield her life to, irresistible and hot as
that storm, she had felt already, when he held her for a moment in his
arms in the transport of passion, and heard his fearless avowal of
desire.
To marry any man now seemed hard; to marry this one was inexpressible
shame, and at the thought of it she could not shed a tear, such
paralysis came over her. She had read of the recent Greek revolution,
where elegant ladies of Scio, and other isles of the AEgean Sea, educated
in the best seminaries of Europe, had been sold by thousands as common
slaves in the markets of Constantinople, and carried to their estates by
brutal Turks, with all the gloating anticipation of lust and tyranny.
On this vivid episode started a procession of all the ages of women who
had been the sport of conquest since their common mother, Eve, lost
Paradise by her simplicity: the Jewish maidens carried to Babylon, the
Gothic virgins dragged at the horse-tails of the Moors, the daughters of
Palestine and Byzantium consigned to Arab sensualists, and made to
follow their nomadic tents, and the almond-eyed damsels of China
surrendered by their parents to the wild Kalmucks, to be beaten and
starved on every cold plain of Asia, till life was laid down with
neither hope nor fear.
"I am happier than millions of my sex," Vesta said; "my captor does not
despise me, at least. Perhaps he will treat me kinder than I think, and
give me time to draw towards him without this deadly pain and shame.
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